[Nym3-devel] Ordering criterion for the synopsis and messages

[Jean-René Reinhard]

Hi,

In the course of the implementation of the nymserver we came into some
difficulty about the way to order the synopses and messages, and would
like to precise this point.

According to the way the SUMMARIZE command is defined (nym-spec
§4.3.7) a criterion used to order the synopses is the date of arrival
on the server. This date is attached to a mid. But, as a matter of
fact, neither these dates nor easy ways to compare two different mids
on this criterion are conveyed in the information send by the server
to the client : 

- The synopses may contain the date of the traversal of the MTA before
the nymserver but there is no guarantee that the order between 2
messages is preserved between the moment this date is evaluated and
the moment the nymserver receives the messages. Furthermore, the
presence of this information in the synopses isn't guaranted, since the
date appears at the end of the Received header, which may be truncated
if the number of characters of this header is close or overcomes 80;

- Nothing in the specifications guarantees the ordering of the
synopses contained in a SUMMARY command.

In the current state of the specification, we don't see any easy way
to determine the order of the synopses (especially determine the
oldest) without extra communication.

During the discussion we had on this matter with Laurent we came to
several suggestions on the possible ways to amend the specification to
make the lacking information more easily available.

- Enforce the ordering of the synopses in the SUMMARY commands : we
are not comfortable with this solution since it remains difficult to
order different SUMMARY commands relative to one or some SUMMARIZE
commands;

- Make the nymserver add a header to the synopses, whose value is
either the date of reception of the message by the nymserver, either a
sequence number : we prefer this solution but are not sure of what it
entails in terms of anonymity.

We would welcome some comments on these suggestions, possibly the
selection of one of them or the proposition of another one.

Jean-René
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